The Supreme Court this week is set to consider whether its decision to strike down automatic life sentences with no chance of release for teenage killers should apply retroactively, a decision that could determine the fate of hundreds of inmates whose convictions are final.

The nation's highest tribunal will hear the case of Henry Montgomery, who was found guilty in 1963 of fatally shooting a sheriff's deputy in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and has been serving a life sentence ever since, according to the Associated Press.

In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled in 2012 that mandatory life sentences for juvenile offenders were unconstitutional. The justices had already outlawed the use of the death penalty for underage killers in 2005, and, five years later, prohibited life without parole for non-homicides, USA Today noted.

Whether the 2012 rules should apply to those convicted before the decision was reached, however, has been left up to state courts and legislatures, who have handled the issue in a variety of fashions. Fourteen state supreme courts have ordered for the ruling to be applied retroactively, while seven others, along with four federal appeals courts, have issued contrary decisions.

Some family members of juvenile homicide victims are among those urging the Supreme Court to extend the prohibition on life without parole to all prisoners convicted as minors, the newspaper noted. Sharletta Evans, whose 3-year-old son was shot and killed four days before Christmas in 1995, has forgiven the then-14-year-old killer.

Evans even created a nonprofit in Colorado dedicated to connecting offenders and victims in search of healing. Fifteen state governments, on the other hand, have taken the opposite stance and are urging the nine justices not to make their 2012 ruling retroactive.

"The convictions for these state prisoners span more than five decades," the states wrote in a brief filed with the Supreme Court. "Thus, the considerations of finality weigh heavily here. Any retroactive application of Miller would challenge the settled expectations of victims that these violent murderers would never be subject to release."